Another holiday weekend is upon us...
How am I celebrating? Well, I'm not celebrating, not really anyway. I'm letting everyone else have fun this weekend. I'm just orchestrating the festivities. My husband went off to Deals Gap in Robbinsville, NC, with my dad for a weekend motorcycle riding trip, leaving me alone with our 12 year old daughter. I've been busy keeping her entertained, making sure that this last long weekend we have before school lets out is a fun one. After school lets out in June, she's going to be whisked away to her paternal grandparents for a week, then its off to summer camp...once she returns from summer camp, she will be home with me for about two weeks, then its off to her aunt's for a few weeks...by the time its all said and done, I'll have had approximately 3 weeks with my daughter this summer. Now, this isn't the ideal summer plans for a girl about to turn into a teenager. Especially since I just quit my job to stay home and spend more time with her. But I have obligations. There is so much family, and so little time during the year for them all to see my daughter. Of course they will all understand if I say no, that I can't give her up for the majority of the summer break. But she wants to go, she's already excited about seeing her cousins and her grandparents. She looks forward to camp all year. It wouldn't be fair to her or her family if I were to keep her home with me just for the sake of keeping her home. Besides, I do have her for a full 10 months every year...it won't kill me to give up two months.
So, this weekend is all about her. Friday night we went to the movies (I let her pick what we saw), had dinner together at a fancy Italian restaurant, then headed to Dairy Queen for desert. Today was a shopping spree at Dadeland Mall, which is the biggest mall in our area. Memorial Day shopping does have its advantages - every store in the mall had incredible sales going on, and she shopped her little heart out for a total of about $150.00. I may or may not have bought some heath bar and chocolate chip cookies as well...
Now my house is full of little giggling girls. And they are hyped up on sugar. Lots and lots of sugar, in the form of ice cream sundaes. My daughter, her 10 year old cousin and my 9 year old niece are spending the night together - a good old fashioned slumber party. Tomorrow we are heading to the local park that has a lake, a man made beach and not one, but two water slides. I'm going to pack a picnic lunch to take along so that we can spend the entire day there.
There's a lot of giggling and squealing going on. I may need Advil later (I will definitely need Advil later). But its worth it. I don't have many more of these kiddie years left, in fact, this may actually be her last year as a "kid" since she turns 13 in the fall. That in itself is an entirely different blog post. A really, really long one. With tear splatters on the laptop screen.
So let her giggle all she wants. Before I know it, she will be all grown up and then she will be gone. I fully intend to enjoy this while it lasts.
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